Friday, 24 June 2011

Don’t let society scapegoat smokers

Peter Guillam argues here that calls to ban electronic cigarettes reflect a deep-rooted prejudice against smokers and our death-denying culture. In the Guardian, of all places. “You will see in the thread below vitriolic comments about smokers being disgusting, revolting, even sub-human; for smokers are now fair game for just about any sort of abuse,” he says. It seems that stigmatising smokers is the new fashionable prejudice. Read the full article.

I think the article is a gross exaggeration, no doubt to make a point. I am a non-smoker and was a trade union rep. Our workplaces used to allow smoking throughout, until they introduced smoking rooms, and later a complete ban in advance of the legal one, and once restrictions were introduced, I'd get complaints from certain union members. The complaints might be about smokers having extra breaks, or spending too long on their smoking breaks.

I refused to take forward their complaints, inviting them to go to management themselves, but they didn't, preferring me to fire their bullets. I pointed out the positive aspect of having a a smoke-free office, and asked whether they really wanted to work alongside a desperate smoker not allowed to go for a cigarette? I also pointed out that everyone had breaks, for a drink or a chat, and reminded them that some smokers actually took work with them to the smoking room, something that became impossible when a complete ban was brought in and smokers had to leave the building.

You may think that all this supports the article, but it doesn't, because in a workplace of well over 100, only the same half dozen or so whinged about smokers. The attitude of most people was to shrug and let the smokers get on with it.

In my experience, the view of many non-smokers is similar to my own: smokers can smoke all they like as long as I don't have to share the smoke. Not a moral position: just one of personal comfort.

Yes, there are bad mannered non-smokers as described inthe article, but there are bad mannered smokers too - and you'll often see both varieties when the topic of smoking is discussed.

What's happening on Twitter?

Most recent comments

A Martin Scriblerus Blog

Salient quotations

"If I see one more politician who voted for the smoking ban crying crocodile tears about the state of the pub industry, I may throw up." (Chris Snowdon)

"The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end." (David Cameron, 2008)

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." (H. L. Mencken)

"The final nails have now been hammered into the coffin of the freedom to smoke in enclosed public places. This piece of legislation must be one of the most restrictive, spiteful and socially divisive imposed by any British Government. (Lord Stoddart of Swindon)

"Raising taxes on alcohol to prevent problem drinking is akin to raising the price of gasoline to prevent people from speeding." (Edward Peter Stringham)

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." (C. S. Lewis)

"People who deal only in 'craft' beer do not care about some dirty old pub and the dirty old people who are in it and the dirty old community that it holds together." (Boozy Procrastinator)

"There's a saying that, given time, all organisations end up as if they were run by a conspiracy of their foes." (Rhys Jones)

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

"No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare." (Kingsley Amis)

"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves,
For you will have lost the last of England." (Hilaire Belloc)